Bridging 2021 and 2022: Let’s think about building connection and cohesion

As you reflect on how you might collectively develop collaborative leadership strategies to build connectivity across learning spaces within schools, I would like to share a flavour of collaborative leadership workshops undertaken by across-school networks I have had the opportunity to work alongside in Auckland over some time. Throughout last year the school networks chose to focus their collaborative leadership inquiries on building connectivity between spaces within their school. When we think about learning spaces in schools, groupings that may come to mind are:

• Senior Leaders - Principal and Deputies
• Middle Leaders - such as Syndicate Leaders, Heads of Department (HoD’s)
• Middle Leaders who work across in-school teams and across schools in their network
• Teachers
• Learning Support Staff

There may be other groupings that you would choose to add that are applicable in your context.

Take a look at the diagram below that suggests, along with some examples, a way to frame your collaborative mind-mapping to show areas Senior and Middle Leadership teams may identify as needing improvement for learning connections.